Q: I’m a transplant to Texas from the country’s northern regions, and one thing that has struck me since I got here is that there are virtually no basements in people’s houses. As someone who did a lot of growing up in basements—playing air hockey, watching Fast Times at Ridgemont High a few hundred times, maybe engaging in some occasional necking, etc.—this seems like a major disadvantage of living in Texas. Can you explain to me why Texas is a basementless state?

Jeff Fish, Austin

A: So, if the Texanist is hearing you correctly, what you are saying is that one of the big pluses to living in northern climes is an abundance of dank, windowless, subterranean rooms? And that not having such spaces in homes here in Texas is somehow a drawback to the growing-up process? The Texanist is scratching his head.

It is true that basements in Texas’s residential structures are a rarity. The Texanist specifically highlights “residential” because basements are not uncommon in larger buildings. The Capitol, in Austin, has a basement; the nearby Goodman Building, a stone’s throw from the statehouse’s west entrance, has a basement that houses an historic bar at which the Texanist likes to wet his whistle now and then; and the Alamo, despite what you may have learned from Pee-wee’s Big Adventure, has two basements. In fact, almost all the big Texas buildings the Texanist can think of, both historic and new, have basements. But you are absolutely right that few houses in Texas are similarly equipped.

This is, to answer your main question, due to a variety of factors. In some parts of the state the water table is too near the surface of the ground, making leaking and flooding an issue. In other areas the bedrock is too near the surface, making digging a basement difficult and costly. In still other areas, what’s known as “expansive” soils—clay and/or shale that shifts around in excessively wet and excessively dry conditions, which is to say normal conditions in Texas—make a basement unworkable. And then there’s the matter of the frost line, the depth at which water in the ground freezes in wintertime, which is pretty much nonexistent here in largely subtropical Texas but is a big deal in the frosty north. See, a foundation set in ground that freezes and thaws can move around, which is not a good thing. Thus, in your native land, Mr. Fish, foundations have to be constructed below the surface of the ground—sometimes many feet below the surface. And since the builder of a home is going to be burrowing down anyway, why not add a basement? In Texas, there exists no such imperative.

Another reason we don’t have basements but natural-born Yankees such as yourself do: In much of Texas we’ve got a superabundance of land and a relative scarcity of zoning regulations; in the north it’s exactly the opposite. So where builders up yonder who want to add additional square footage to a house feel compelled to dig down, here we’re usually happy to opt for the easier path: building up and/or out.

Now, let’s get back to your theory about basements and “growing up” for just a minute. Until receiving your letter, the Texanist had never considered the cultural importance of basements in the development and maturation of young Northerners. He’d only imagined them as musty spots filled with life’s accumulated detritus and had no idea that they could also be filled with fond memories, having served as fertile beds for northern adolescents in the bloom of “growing up.”

Of course, as you point out, basements were not really an option for the Texanist and his cohort. So, like most young folks in the Lone Star State, the Texanist did his “growing up” aboveground. Thinking back, he played his air hockey at Skate Haven, watched Fast Times at Ridgemont High at the theater, and engaged in bouts of necking, etc., whenever and wherever he could.

Additionally, the Texanist fished, gigged frogs, caught turtles and snakes, shot his BB gun, smoked his grapevine, glimpsed his soggy old men’s lifestyle and entertainment magazines, experimented with smokeless tobacco, drank his garage refrigerator-appropriated beer, and expanded his dirty-word vocabulary on the banks of the beautiful and storied Bird Creek in his mostly basementless hometown of Temple. Which is to say he did all of those things outdoors, which is really how it ought to be.

Have a question for the Texanist? He’s always available here. Be sure to tell him where you’re from.

Comments

I have seen basements with dens, workshops and photo darkrooms. But, you are right, it is all about the area. Some areas of NJ and LI have no basements.

CypressTexas

I’ve seen basements (small ones sometimes) built for food storage in some of the old German stone homes in hill country.

rbgintx

I was whisked away from my Texas birthplace to the north(Michigan) when I was six. Moving north in 1957 from south Texas brought several previously unknown things into my life. The positive or negative impact of these such as television and central heating, is still being debated. When my folks bought a house, it came with a basement. Air hockey didn’t exist so my Dad built a Ping Pong table which endured many winters. He spent his winter spare time in another corner tying flies for summer fishing trips. I also practiced my putting stroke on a strip of carpet down there in anticipation of spring. The basement was also cooler in the heat and humidity of summer. In those days there was still plenty of time for outdoor fun like shoveling two feet of snow out of the driveway following a winter blizzard or pushing a lawn mower around the largest lawn in the neighborhood every Saturday during the summer months. After nearly 50 years of meandering to various locales in the country, I returned to Texas happily to find that in spite of the lack of basements, television along with central heat and air and found their way to the Lone Star State.

Lloyd Bonafide

I can’t believe the LENGTH of the reply to the question. Here’s a much more concise answer:

LIMESTONE and other really hard rocks make it too expensive to bulld basements in most areas.

Kathy Bryson

The length of the reply was necessary – I live in the hill country now and it’s true – three inches of top soil and underneath lies limestone. Lousy for gardening. But I’m a native Houstonian and, poke a stick in the ground, water bubbled up. This state is too large and geologically complex to characterize with one sentence.

Lloyd Bonafide

FAKE NEWS!

Paul Sadler

Move to west Texas. There are lots of basements out here in tornado country.

PrattonTexas

Many of us grew up with “basements” in NW Texas but we called them storm cellars. They are not whole house in size.

terririmmer

I grew up in Georgia where all the houses had basements and I just assumed everyone did. We roller skated down there, my parents had parties there, my sister taught the kids in the neighborhood arts and crafts and we put on skits for our parents. My dad had his workshop there, too. But at night on the weekends when my parents would go out and leave us to tend to ourselves it became a scary place and every bump in the night would make us think someone was coming to get us through the bottom back door that led to the outside of the house. Still, I wouldn’t have traded our basement for the world because it was many things depending on the day or night and depending on the season.

Tejasguitarman

No basements here because in the summer Texas is the closest place to Hell without digging a hole.

Katherine Kerr Kubatzky

I grew up in Amarillo, where we had a basement. That’s where Dad kept his snake collection and where we huddled with a transistor radio, flashlights and candles when there were tornado warnings.

Johann

Most of the old German houses in the Hill Country have “cellars”. Of the three old homesteads in my family, all have “cellars”. They were cool in summer for projects, and we stored vegetables, milk, sausage, etc.

Kozmo

Basements are good. Extra room for work, play, and storage. What passes for “attics” in modern Texas houses are tiny, dirty blast furnaces that are useless bug havens and lack of basements as usable space is why everyone in Texas with a garage usually is forced to keep junk in it, not cars. And we could sure use basements to keep our water heaters, laundry machines, and AC/heating units in, as well as protected pipes that aren’t as likely to freeze in the winter.

Kozmo

Maybe it’s a joke, but the Alamo, historically, has no basement(s). If someone has built one since the battle, it’s news to me.

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